Noname’s second studio album, Sundial, synthesizes everything that the firebrand rapper, née Fatimah Warner, excels at. Tracks like “Balloons” and “Afro Futurism” feature some of the fiercest political critiques and nimbly performed rapping of Warner’s career. Her delivery is poised yet casual, her charmingly nasal voice full of weariness and vulnerability.
For all its musings about American society, geopolitics, and where Warner fits into all of it, Sundial retains a certain goofy playfulness. “Boomboom,” for one, is fun and melodic, with digressions about both eating pussy and sucking dick, some W.E.B. Du Bois puns, and a honey-sweet chorus sung by Barbadian songstress Ayoni. And Warner delightfully presents even the thorniest of verses in a hooky patter on tracks like opener “Black Mirror”: “We smokin’ positivity like dust, trust/Angels never fucked with us/Shadowbox the sun down ‘til sundown.”
Even songs without official guest verses, like “Beauty Supply,” feature backup singers to fill in emotional texture and amplify the mood. The singers vocalize in unison with Warner or simply emphasize her inflections, lending Sundial a sense of community that’s further heightened by the actual guest spots. Warner cedes the floor so fully to her collaborators—including underground iconoclasts like $ilkMoney and Billy Woods, as well as conscious-rap mainstay Common—that she often lets them have the final word (even on the entire album, in Common’s case). It’s a gesture in keeping with sentiments of tracks like “Hold Me Down”: “We too can cause harm, we really should link arms”—a call for unity that also leaves no individual without blame.
On “Namesake,” Warner takes Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Kendrick Lamar to task for participating in the Super Bowl and furthering the NFL’s “propaganda for the military industrial complex.” She concludes the verse by interrogating her own agreement to play Coachella after making a stand that she wouldn’t. The notion of taking responsibility may also apply to Jay Electronica’s verse on “Hold Me Down,” on which he controversially extolls the Nation of Islam. By including his statements, Warner isn’t necessarily condoning them but, rather, weaving a tapestry of distinct yet flawed voices, including her own, acknowledging that they’re capable of bringing both joy and pain.
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